


The January

by mliz18



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, sad boy Tommy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:54:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21631198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mliz18/pseuds/mliz18
Summary: Tommy was born on a boat.
Relationships: Grace Burgess/Tommy Shelby
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	The January

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I live off of comments please let me know what you think :)

Child of the river, he hears its call all his life. Steady, insistent, impatient. His veins are not full of blood but rather the brackish water that buffeted the groaning wooden planks of the old boat as he slid from between his mother’s hips. They strained and bore down and cracked open and he came into the world, red-faced and squalling among the tides. His first lullaby was the lap of wet against the wood, over and over and over as the boat shifted and creaked, the waves singing in greeting. He was brought ashore to the crones who held him in their hands, twisted and bulging like knotted wood, skin draping their knuckles like the soft bunching of a quilt. They told his mother that the flow of the river’s water would be the beat of his lifeblood in his chest, he belonged to it and it belonged to him, tied together in an eternal push and pull.

Frantic, crazed, frenzied. It is frothing rapids pounding over slick rock and sending fine droplets of white mist spiraling into the air, the current is his heartbeat as his finger slides over the trigger of his gun, the cold bite of metal cutting through the roar of the water. His forefinger twitches, just slightly, and the shot that rings out always brings a blessed quiet. No drip or trickle or roar or current, just silence deafening his ears. Nothing in the world is louder than that silence.

Blunt, relentless, unforgiving. It is a waterfall carving out solemn stone over eons, shaping and cutting away and wearing down. The world parts in front of him as he cleaves through it, molding it with his hands. Molding the family, the city, the country. They bend and sway in his path like the river reeds, fall away from him like the stone as he pushes and strains forward. They cannot refuse him.

Agreeable, calm, at peace. It slows to a steady trickle when he first holds his son, the soft flow of a gentle creek, gushing through the reeds and winding forgivingly around the stones. A shallow pool touched by the sun, crystal-clear and full of light, warm as it flows through the fingers. Charlie is born in their home, penned in by the walls of the manor rising around them, a gilded cage, nothing tethering him to the world. Tommy doesn’t know what it is that will drive his son. Not the soil, not the wind, not the water.

Numbing, heavy, full of sorrow. The sound of rain fills his body to the brim in the stretch of time after Grace is laid down to sleep in the soil beneath his feet. Sheets of sorrow lash at Tommy’s face and soak his coat, his skin so slicked with water he can’t tell the difference between the tracks that belong to his tears and what the rain has left behind. He wants to let it drown him, stand under it for hours and hours until it pounds him down, down, down into the earth alongside her.

Restless, unsettled, drifting. It is the season of monsoons, of fallen rain pooling in every nook and cranny and crevice, spilling over and into the next, running down streets and hills and riverbanks. It looks for a place to rest, but what looks like safety is where it’s swallowed by the earth. Tommy paces the long corridors of his house with too many empty rooms, footsteps bouncing off of the cold wood and the high ceilings. There is no place for him to rest where the ghosts can’t find him. So he spills over into the next room, down the stairs, around the circle of the kitchens and servants' corridors. He spills out the great and heavy front door, into the knife-sharp sting of the wind across his cheeks, the endless expanse of grey and brown and green. He’ll walk and walk and walk until his path brings him back around to the house, where he’ll pace the corridors for another night. 

Polly was born with a caul, with one foot in each world, and sometimes Tommy thinks she can see the water as it flows beneath his skin. Her eyes are the coal-black of the soft soil she was born atop of, unyielding as the earth. They’re full of pity for him. Pity for the man doomed to a life of yearning, pity for legs never resting, pity for eyes full of the current. He can see the path of his life’s current as it twists and turns and dips. It has yet to falter. He thinks that Polly can see further than him, all the way out to the point on the distant horizon where his life’s current slows to a trickle, a drip, dries up like an old well. So he doesn’t like to look too long into her eyes, scared he might see the day coming. He paces and wanders and fills his mind with plans to drown out the steady approach of his river’s end. Water in his veins, child of the river, he cannot settle.


End file.
